This project proposes to investigate various speech disorders with emerging computational algorithms. Specifically, it is in our plan to develop an expert system based upon the use of recent advances in neural networks, fuzzy logic and other computational algorithms. Although several researchers in communication disorders have already claimed some initial success with these recently emerging tools, a thorough investigation is warranted to tap the full potential of these algorithms. It is anticipated that the proposed system will be capable of objectively analyzing communication disorders based on multi-dimensional measures of speech fluency, acoustic variables, and some selected physiologic assessments. Specifically, the proposed system will be applied to differentiate between the set of data from normal and speech-language disordered individuals so that the burden of perceptual judgment by the clinician is objectively resolved by the expert system. There is significant evidence from clinical experience that this corpus of measures contain the information necessary to make the differential diagnosis. However, this information has not been mined successfully through objective means because of the multitude of simultaneous variables present in these tasks, and lack of sufficient technical thrust in this province. It is expected that this project will include a wide variety of communication disorders such as: stuttering, spasmodic dysphonia, aphasia, apraxia and dysarthria. This technology is expected to benefit clinicians in objective decision-making. Currently individual clinicians perform this task. It is subjective and time consuming. The clinical decisions on treatment methods depend upon the nature and extent of the training and any biases inherent in that training of individual clinicians. This limitation may be overcome by the unlimited learning potential of the computer. Another aim of this project is to develop a model of communication disorders based upon the underlying mechanisms of the expert system. It is anticipated that such a model will provide helpful insights into the pathophysiology of communication disorders. Furthermore, the results of this research is expected to improve the current knowledge of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of existing algorithms and develop means to combine the advantages of several computational methods within one operating system.